


Between the De Vil and the Deep Blue Sea, Part 1

by gin_eater



Series: Deep Sea Divers [3]
Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/F, Inappropriate Humor, these two idiots
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-07
Updated: 2015-06-07
Packaged: 2018-04-03 06:34:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,367
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4090672
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gin_eater/pseuds/gin_eater
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set in the Enchanted Forest, as the Queens of Darkness make their respective ways home shortly after the Chernobog incident. Ursula and Cruella go their separate ways for the first time since their initial meeting. Parting is such sneaky sorrow.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Between the De Vil and the Deep Blue Sea, Part 1

**Author's Note:**

> For this series I have an almost entirely different origin story for Cruella lined up, partly because of how this series began (with zero Author involvement), and partly because I found the one canon gave her to be ... lacking, in a lot of respects. Ahem. Anyway, there's a little hint at the end of this as to one of the directions I'll be going with her.

"It's not that deep," evaluated Ursula, staring out across the river.

Beside her, Cruella pursed her lips uncertainly. "How can you tell?"

Ursula gave her a Look.

"Nevermind," Cruella muttered. She sighed theatrically up at the overcast sky. "Damn Maleficent, always flying off when she could most be of use."

"We don't need her. I told you, it's not that deep, and the current's not bad here. We can swim across."

Cruella sighed again. "No," she said quietly, "we can't."

Ursula frowned. "Why not?"

Cruella mumbled something unintelligible.

"What?"

She huffed irritably. "I _can't swim,_ darling."

Ursula stared at her as if she'd grown another head.

"Oh, don't give me that look! You've drowned enough people in your day; it can't be that new a concept to you."

"No, I ... seriously, you can't even doggy-paddle?"

Cruella scowled at her. "Very punny, darling," she snippily quipped. "And not in these clothes, even if I could."

Ursula thought for a moment, then shrugged. "Okay. Take the clothes off, then."

"I beg your pardon?"

"What, suddenly you're shy?"

"Darling, what part of 'even if I could' was unclear to you? Because I can sink just as well clothed as naked, I assure you."

"I meant I'll tow you across. But I'm assuming you're going to want something dry to wear on the other side, unless you have a thing for the smell of wet ... whatever that is. I'm sure I don't."

Cruella looked doubtfully between Ursula and the river.

"How -- how can I be sure you won't let go of me halfway across?"

Another Look. "The same way your snoring suggests you're not terribly concerned that I'll strangle you in your sleep."

"I do not snore!" Cruella balked.

"You do, a little. Don't worry -- it's kind of cute."

Cruella looked mortified. "Well you ... _you_ sleep with your mouth hanging open! Gaping! Like a codfish!"

Ursula smiled. Cruella found the expression infuriatingly smug.

"Been watching me sleep, have you?" the sea witch asked.

Cruella scoffed. "Don't flatter yourself, darling, I hardly _chose_ to open my eyes and find you lying there poised to eat my face."

Ursula raised an eyebrow. "You haven't complained about my eating habits yet."

Cruella glared diamond-hilted daggers of disdain. "You're intolerable."

"And you're stalling." She nodded at Cruella's clothes. "Come on. Off with it. I don't want to be here all day."

Cruella huffed a breath through her nose.

"Ugh, _fine,_ " she relented, and shrugged her shoulders free of white mink. "Hold this."

"My god," said Ursula, plucking the coat from her hands with one tentacle. "How much does this thing weigh?"

"Oh, four stone or thereabouts."

Ursula looked impressed. "You're right: you _would_ sink."

"Just so."

Cruella tugged down the straps of her dress and contorted her arms through the holes, and shed the whole shimmery sheath in a wiggle before kicking it up in the direction of the nearest tentacle and starting on her step-ins and stockings.

"So many straps," Ursula remarked.

"Mm. Mankind's subtle way of putting every woman in a strait-waistcoat. But they do create such wonderful lines."

"I don't know. I like the lines you have without them just fine." The sea witch leered at her openly, and Cruella flashed her a puckish smile.

"Appreciated, darling, but we can't all thwart gravity forever by spending ninety percent of our lives underwater."

The tilt of Ursula's head might have signified concurrence or contemplation; Cruella couldn't quite tell which. No matter, though -- she was down to gemstones and gooseflesh by now, and was nearly as eager to get this indignity over with as she was to avoid it altogether.

She looked warily at the river, and gnawed at her bottom lip.

"I won't let you go," Ursula assured her, coiling a tentacle twice around her waist. "I promise."

Cruella swallowed against the weird little thrill that ricocheted a few times off the walls of her stomach at Ursula's words before it lodged itself somewhere in her chest. She nodded once, and her unlikely lifeguard backed into the water.

Cruella shuffled grudgingly after her into the silt, hissing a curse at the temperature.

"Bleeding christ, it's cold!"

"It'll feel warmer once you're all the way in," Ursula assured her.

Cruella snorted. "Had many bites on that line, darling?"

Ursula smirked. "Like you haven't nibbled the bait." She took another couple of steps back, and then quite suddenly sank, until the water all but covered her shoulders.

Cruella blinked in surprise. "Bit of a drop-off, is there?"

"It's gradual," said Ursula. "I just deep-sixed the legs.”

"You ..." Cruella squinted uselessly at the murky water that had until moments ago been level with the sea witch's midsection, eyebrows climbing when the curling tips of four additional tentacles emerged from the surface like thick arabesques blown from bottle green glass. "... Ah."

They moved further along; soon enough, the water was approaching Cruella's chest -- her neck -- her toes lost contact with the riverbed oh Lucifer’s blistering _bollocks_ ...

"We need to reassess your definition of the phrase 'not that deep,' " she said through chattering teeth.

"Just relax," urged Ursula.

"I am relaxed!" Cruella snapped.

"Then why are you cutting off circulation to the arm that's keeping you afloat?"

Cruella averted her eyes, chagrined. She forcibly loosened her grip on the tentacle at her waist, and tried to calm down.

"I don't like this," she complained. "This weightless, waffling ... _woozy_ sort of feeling. It's not natural. It's like the world's got drunk without me."

Ursula tugged her closer, and Cruella felt arms -- ordinary, human arms -- slip around her middle, felt hands clasp together at the small of her back. She shifted her own hands to Ursula's shoulders, wrapped her legs around Ursula's waist, and felt a good deal steadier than before.

"Better?" Ursula asked.

Cruella shrugged with sulky reluctance. "A little."

"Just relax," Ursula said again. "There's nothing more natural than this. Every sentient creature in the world begins its life in water."

"Oh, spare me the Atlantican propaganda, I'm not _that_ rattled."

Ursula rolled her eyes. "Right."

Cruella chose not to dignify her skepticism with a response, and glowered loftily at the trees on the far bank.

She actually _was_ warming up, she noticed, and was only nominally annoyed by the realization. The ride was smooth, with Ursula not so much swimming as trucking along the riverbed on lowered tentacles, and it was hardly a chore to be touching her, newly minted though their affiliation was. Come to think of it, they hadn't thus far been this physically close to one another without a very different goal in mind. Even the tangle and sprawl of sleep was an excusable product of hedonistic nonchalance; _this_ \-- during the day, out-of-doors, and predicated on a power imbalance that was not tipped in Cruella’s favor -- reeked of a form of affection to which she was unaccustomed. This was practically a _hug._

Cruella couldn't remember the last time she'd been hugged, or when she herself had hugged -- anything even partly human, anyway; anything that could recognize one for what it was: the soft, vulnerable underbelly of the word “embrace.”

What excellent luck, then, she quickly rationalized, that this was not a hug at all, but a necessary evil. Less fun, to be sure, than the unnecessary ones, but needs must is needs must. She'd ended up starkers for far sillier reasons.

... Or had she?

Cruella glanced up at her clothes, the whole kit and caboodle held aloft by one tentacle, safe and dry.

"Er, darling?" she said. "Why couldn't you ferry _me_ across the same way?"

Ursula's mouth curved in a small, roguish smile. "I was wondering when you'd notice."

Cruella stared at her, an ignominious flush percolating as the understanding that she'd been had sunk in.

"Oh, how I _despise_ you," she seethed, attempting to channel every fishhook and filleting knife she had ever laid eyes upon into the brutality of her gaze.

Ursula's smile widened. "I can't wait to tell Maleficent what a gullible guppy you are. She might actually crack a smile."

"You'd better hope that's one hell of a smile, darling, because I'm warning you, it will come at the expense of never seeing me naked again -- and _get that tentacle away from me,_ you do _not_ get to touch me there right now!"

Ursula's smile washed into a puzzled frown. "Touch you where?"

"You know very well where!"

"Cruella, the only place I'm touching you is your waist."

"Oh, really? Then what the hell is snaking its way up my thigh?"

The sea witch lifted an eyebrow and glanced down at the water.

"An eel," she said.

She hadn't known Cruella's eyes could open that widely, or that she was apparently part-python, as all threats of carnal famine were abandoned and she crushed up against Ursula with a horrified squeal.

"Oh, god, tell it to bugger off, make it go away!"

"I thought you could control all animals?"

"How the hell am I supposed to mesmerize an eel, blow bubbles at it?!"

Ursula shrugged. "It's worth a try."

"Oh, god, it's moving higher!" She squirmed convulsively, practically trying to climb the sea witch's torso to escape. "Ursula! Ursula, damn you, this isn't funny, stop laughing!"

Ursula only shook her head. "You gullible, gullible guppy."

Cruella ceased her struggling. The "eel" slithered up her back and out of the water to pat her condescendingly on the shoulder.

She looked at it.

The tip of the tentacle gave a little wave.

"... _Fuck you, Ursula!_ " Cruella spat, Ursula's low chortle turning into an outright villainous cackle as the other witch frothed and sputtered and swiped uselessly at the appendage that had bested her. "You'll pay for this, you slimy -- you bottom-feeding _bitch!_ "

Ursula sobered abruptly, and lifted an eyebrow in affront. "Well, if that's the way you feel ..."

Arms and tentacles loosened, and Cruella was back to clinging in an instant.

"No! No it's not, it's not! Darling you promised!"

Ursula's dark eyes gleamed with amusement. "Put your feet down."

Cruella studied her face for signs of further deception; finding none, she tentatively unwound her legs from Ursula's waist, and lowered them until her soles met mud and pebbles at around halfway unbent.

"... _Ugh!_ " she huffed, and shoved Ursula away before standing up fully and slogging her way through the muck to the bank.

Ursula glided after her, the very essence of dignity, making a point of not returning two of her tentacles to legs until she was properly on dry land. Cruella glared at her, shivering and dripping and looking for all the world like a fuming cat just out of the bath.

"Give me my things," she demanded, holding out a hand.

"Don't you want to dry off first?"

Cruella looked theatrically around the bank. "With what, darling? Just give me my blasted coat, I'm freezing!"

Ursula snapped her fingers, and in the next instant every drop of water on Cruella's skin and hair leapt away from her body like lemmings off a cliff, and pattered to the ground.

Cruella stared down at her dry legs and the wet sand, clicked her tongue, and drummed her fingers against her thigh.

"You could have dammed the whole river, couldn't you," she said.

"Not as easily," Ursula admitted. "I would have had to gesture."

Cruella nodded. "Just so you're aware, my revenge will be multifaceted and quite possibly inhumane."

Ursula smirked, dropped Cruella's heavy coat over her bony shoulders, and passed her her underthings.

"Looking forward to it. _Darling._ "

"Oh, shut up!"

Cruella dressed hastily, shimmying into corset and stockings and brassiere, fingers moving with spiderly efficiency over hook-and-eyes and garter clips.

"God, I can't wait to be home," she sighed. "A blazing fire, a nip of gin -- _ermine sheets,_ darling. You haven't lived until you've made love utterly _swathed_ in ermine."

"Sounds ... fluffy."

" _Heavenly_ is the word you're looking for. Like being adrift on a bed of ... well, nothing else really compares, but it's perfectly divine."

Ursula gave a noncomittal hum. "Far be it for a goddess to turn her nose up at anything perfectly divine. I'll have to try it someday."

"Someday? We're only an hour's walk from the bayou -- well, two at the most."

Ursula was quiet for a moment.

"You walk," she said. "I have to swim."

Cruella sneered, expertly shifting her coat so that she could pour her dress over her head without having to remove it.

"What, our little excursion wasn't enough for you?"

"I mean this river leads to the sea."

"... Oh." The dress hid her face from view just long enough for her to mask her disappointment.

"It's nothing personal," said Ursula. "I ... let's just say I have a garden that needs tending."

Cruella scoffed, waving the sea witch's words away as though they were little more than bothersome flies.

"Don't be ridiculous. _Personal._ " She made a show of adjusting the lay of her dress, straightening the waist, running her thumbs along the underarm seams. "This hardly counts as a courtship, darling. Just a bit of fun to pass the time." She licked her lips, braced a hand upon one cocked hip, and finally met Ursula's excruciatingly blank gaze. "If you have to go, then by all means, don't let me keep you."

Ursula looked at her, head tilted as if she were watching some curious bit of street theater.

Cruella felt her face heat at the scrutiny, but she stuck out her jaw, and silently dared the sea witch to make something more of the scene.

"... You have three weeks," Ursula said after a minute, "to plot your revenge."

Cruella pursed her lips to disguise a smile.

"Longer than I need, darling."

Ursula inclined her head and, with a gesture, the river behind her split down the middle with an extraordinary roar that for a moment took Cruella's breath away.

Smiling in a way that could only be called playfully predacious, Ursula backed into the breach; with a second wave of her hand, the water flooded its invisible weir, and submerged her in a raucous rush.

Cruella shrugged her coat up higher on her shoulders, turned round, and teetered her way into the woods towards De Vil's Bayou, grinning from ear to ear.


End file.
